1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to a special resonant side drumhead add-on/retrofit kit and method for live and studio miking applications where the sounds of the drum can be tuned to match a desired sound and response profile.
2. Background
In the past, there has been a standard way of placing microphones on a drum kit in order to get a desired sound. This mainly involves placing microphones over the batter side drumhead to pick up the attack and tone characteristics of the drum when played. Care with this placement must be taken so as to not interfere with the player and to prevent the microphones from being hit and damaged and from producing undesirable popping sounds. Isolation is also an issue as this microphone placement also picks up unwanted sounds from cymbals and other drums, otherwise known as “bleed through”. For the bass drum in particular, it was found that cutting a hole in the resonant side drum head was needed to allow for closer microphone placement and better shielding from bleed through.
With the current invention, these aspects of microphone placement change, as all the drums can now be miked from the resonant side head, opposite from the player. The speaker aspect of the invention is derived from the techniques used in microphone placement on guitar and bass amplifiers, where the microphone is placed at the speaker cone and depending on the angle of the microphone to the speaker, either a brighter or fuller sound is picked up. Translating this to the drum, the placement of the microphone also allows for an interesting range of attack and tone, as the speaker translates the sound better than the normal resonant side drumhead which is typically never used for miking purposes.
Currently there are no resonant head devices offered for the other drums. The current invention offers the same capabilities as afforded the bass drum in reference to operation, miking and sound tuning.